A high-profile push by Robert Gates, US defence secretary, to break out of the old cycle of mistrust between Washington and Beijing made only limited progress on Monday, as China held back from satisfying US requests to deepen military ties between the two.
At a press conference with Mr Gates in Beijing, Gen Liang Guanglie, China’s minister of national defence, agreed Beijing would take part in various consultative meetings with Washington during the first half of the year and said Chen Bingde, the People’s Liberation Army chief of general staff, would visit the US during that time.
But he did not endorse Mr Gates’s idea of starting in-depth strategic talks covering nuclear policy, missile defence, cybersecurity and space, and warned that US weapons sales to Taiwan could once again “disrupt” the contacts between the two countries’ militaries.